Hortensia Gens
plebeian; for we have an Hortensius as tribunus plebis [HORTENSIUS, No. 1], and there is no evidence of any patrician families of this name. Cicero, indeed, gives the epithet of nobilis to the orator (pro Quinct. 22; cf. Plut. Cat. Ma. 25; Plin. Nat. 9, 80); but this is sufficiently accounted for by the high curule offices that had been held by several of his ancestors. The name seems to have been derived from the gardening propensities of the first person who lore it; and the surname Hortalus, borne by the great orator's son [Nos. 8 and 10], seems, as Drumann observes, to have been a kind of nickname of the orator himself. (Cic. Att. 2.25, 4.15.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.